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courtneydoss 's review for:
Tarzan of the Apes
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
"Tarzan of the Apes" is a lot like eating Oreos.
On one hand, you have something delicious, lacking nutritional value but also vegan so not THAT bad, right? On the other hand, as you shovel your face full of Oreos, orangutans are dying so that people can harvest the palm oil that goes into those bad boys. So you have three choices. You can eat the Oreos without guilt despite knowing about the environmental effects, eat them with guilt and allow your enjoyment of them to be dampened by your conscience, or you can choose to abstain all together.
In this case, "Tarzan" is the Oreos and racism is the palm oil. And boy, oh boy, did Edgar Rice Burroughs use lots and lots of racism in his Tarzan recipe.
Like Oreos, this book has little to no nutritional value. You will learn absolutely nothing from this novel, and in fact might walk away with some misinformation if you're not careful. The concept of a human raised by animals growing to fit into human society based on his superior intellect and lordly genetics is highly ridiculous, as is the concept of said human developing super human strength. Tarzan is the male equivalent of a Mary Sue - his defining character trait is his perfection.
The pure fantasy of it all is not necessarily a bad thing. While I was reading, I could imagine the glee that a young Victorian boy might have felt reading about all the adventures of Tarzan of the Apes. Tarzan is a super hero before super heroes were a thing. He looks normal, but he isn't. He performs feats of daring do, and always does the "right" thing, and never loses a fight no matter how close he gets to it.
This book is pure, pulpy fun, but let's not ignore the elephant in the room (and I don't mean Tantor). This book is racist as all hell, even for the time it was written. The entire concept of Tarzan as a character is that he is able to do everything that he does ONLY because he is white; and not just white, but LORDLY white. The socioeconomic class that he was born into, despite never having been raised within it, is given as the excuse for every positive part of his character. There is even a passage where Jane, knowing approximately zero about this jungle hopping monkey man, knows that she can trust him because of his....white man's face. Like really? What is that?
In addition to a hard-on for eugenics, Edgar Rice Burroughs seems hell bent on degrading every single non-white character. Esmeralda, who might be the only non-white character that actually speaks, is a caricature of idiocy. She faints constantly, misuses words, and generally provides nothing to the story except someone to laugh at in the midst of the white people. The characterization of the African indigenous peoples, too, is extremely offensive. They are portrayed as savages, made into cannibals for the pure shock value of it, and made the butt of Tarzan's jokes. They are dehumanized and viewed as needlessly violent; all the while Tarzan is swinging around trees literally lynching them without a shred of guilt.
With all of that said, I had a hard time picking a rating for this book because truthfully I enjoyed a bit of it. It was mindless fun to read about the impossible feats of this strange jungle man, and truthfully I wouldn't mind reading the next in the series to find out what happens next. So I guess in this moral quandary I chose option two; eat the Oreo and feel guilty about it. With that said, I'm not exactly about to go around recommending Oreos to everyone I pass by, either. It's one thing to eat an Oreo, and quite another to become an Oreo salesman.
On one hand, you have something delicious, lacking nutritional value but also vegan so not THAT bad, right? On the other hand, as you shovel your face full of Oreos, orangutans are dying so that people can harvest the palm oil that goes into those bad boys. So you have three choices. You can eat the Oreos without guilt despite knowing about the environmental effects, eat them with guilt and allow your enjoyment of them to be dampened by your conscience, or you can choose to abstain all together.
In this case, "Tarzan" is the Oreos and racism is the palm oil. And boy, oh boy, did Edgar Rice Burroughs use lots and lots of racism in his Tarzan recipe.
Like Oreos, this book has little to no nutritional value. You will learn absolutely nothing from this novel, and in fact might walk away with some misinformation if you're not careful. The concept of a human raised by animals growing to fit into human society based on his superior intellect and lordly genetics is highly ridiculous, as is the concept of said human developing super human strength. Tarzan is the male equivalent of a Mary Sue - his defining character trait is his perfection.
The pure fantasy of it all is not necessarily a bad thing. While I was reading, I could imagine the glee that a young Victorian boy might have felt reading about all the adventures of Tarzan of the Apes. Tarzan is a super hero before super heroes were a thing. He looks normal, but he isn't. He performs feats of daring do, and always does the "right" thing, and never loses a fight no matter how close he gets to it.
This book is pure, pulpy fun, but let's not ignore the elephant in the room (and I don't mean Tantor). This book is racist as all hell, even for the time it was written. The entire concept of Tarzan as a character is that he is able to do everything that he does ONLY because he is white; and not just white, but LORDLY white. The socioeconomic class that he was born into, despite never having been raised within it, is given as the excuse for every positive part of his character. There is even a passage where Jane, knowing approximately zero about this jungle hopping monkey man, knows that she can trust him because of his....white man's face. Like really? What is that?
In addition to a hard-on for eugenics, Edgar Rice Burroughs seems hell bent on degrading every single non-white character. Esmeralda, who might be the only non-white character that actually speaks, is a caricature of idiocy. She faints constantly, misuses words, and generally provides nothing to the story except someone to laugh at in the midst of the white people. The characterization of the African indigenous peoples, too, is extremely offensive. They are portrayed as savages, made into cannibals for the pure shock value of it, and made the butt of Tarzan's jokes. They are dehumanized and viewed as needlessly violent; all the while Tarzan is swinging around trees literally lynching them without a shred of guilt.
With all of that said, I had a hard time picking a rating for this book because truthfully I enjoyed a bit of it. It was mindless fun to read about the impossible feats of this strange jungle man, and truthfully I wouldn't mind reading the next in the series to find out what happens next. So I guess in this moral quandary I chose option two; eat the Oreo and feel guilty about it. With that said, I'm not exactly about to go around recommending Oreos to everyone I pass by, either. It's one thing to eat an Oreo, and quite another to become an Oreo salesman.